At the End of All Things
by GlitterNinja
Summary: Redemption comes in threes. Pairing: ItaHina.


**A/N**: Hello all! I have returned after…several years…to write a random fanfic. I haven't been keeping up with Naruto, so I suppose you could consider this AU with strange bits from my own twisted imagination.

Standard disclaimers apply. Otherwise, I'd be filthy rich and making even more money from this story, instead of posting it to our lovely Angst! And weirdness!

**Plot description**: Redemption comes in threes.

* * *

**At the End of All Things**

On a dark and dreary day in December, long and blood-filled years after he had stepped out of Konoha's gates forever, Uchiha Sasuke breathed his last in its shadow.

Though Naruto protested, he eventually agreed that Sasuke was not to be buried within the village walls, nor to be remembered on the memorial tablet. This last good deed could not redeem Sasuke of all his past offenses. A traitor was a traitor after all, and one man, even a Hokage, could not stand alone against all of Konoha.

Under a light snowfall, Naruto alone set out to prepare Sasuke's burial in a small clearing outside Konoha's gates. Naruto had said nothing when Hinata had appeared in mourning black; he would not ask for reasons she did not give of her own free will.

Hinata herself was not entirely sure of her reasons. Few in the village had not lost a loved one in the war against the Sound, and Hinata would not soon forget the deaths of Kiba and Shino and Neji and countless others. But perhaps, she speculated, she had only continued to live even after she had lost all she had ever loved because she felt an obligation to see Sasuke to his end.

Shovelful by shovelful of earth, Naruto said his goodbyes to a man that had been both his closest friend and his greatest enemy. Breath by breath, Hinata sang a song of winter, high and haunting, that she had heard Sasuke's mother sing once in the marketplace, a song she must have learned in some faraway land as a young kunoichi.

The small headstone was bare save for a small carving of the Uchiha fan and the word 'redemption.'

An hour after the grave was filled and covered with stones, Sakura came to retrieve her husband. She had given Hinata a nod of acknowledgement and a tightlipped smile as she held tightly onto Naruto's hand. She had not even spared the grave a glance as they turned to leave. Sakura had made her peace some years before, cutting her ties with Sasuke as he had cut his with her.

Hinata waited a while longer. She waited because she could not cut those bonds as easily as Sakura. She waited because she had been waiting nearly her entire life, now. An old habit, she surmised, looking up into the dark and foreboding sky, and waiting for the second man who had turned his back on her without so much as a goodbye.

If he would ever come in this lifetime, he would come now, she was sure. Because the one he had loved the most, the one he had sacrificed everything for, the one that he had given his life's meaning to, was now resting six feet under earth and stone.

When she felt his dark and terrible and achingly familiar presence behind her, she said, "You made a miscalculation. About Sasuke's character. Your efforts were wasted. Though he was free of the Uchiha, he found another puppetmaster in Orochimaru. A tool until the end."

And Itachi's voice, rougher than she remembered it from those long decades ago, answered into her ear, "What else could I have done? The Hyuuga had fallen into decline, and the Uchiha were poised to follow. You knew it as well as I did, even then. They would have held him back, like they tried to hold me back." She knew the sneer of contempt in his voice, the same sneer she had seen in Sasuke's face as they stood on the opposite sides of a blood-soaked battlefield. "The Uchiha were fools that feared strength even while they claimed to be the strongest. The worst kind of hypocrites."

"All things that begin must end. All things that end must begin anew." She turned, just enough to see the dark shadow of her past. "The Hyuuga have become strong again in Hanabi's hands. The Uchiha would have, if they had been given the chance."

"Was it time that made the Hyuuga strong, Hinata, or was it war? Without the Sound, without Akatsuki, would any of you be as strong as you are now? Strength is attained through killing, not waiting to die."

Hinata smiled, colder and bitterer than the winter wind that lifted her hair. "And there they are. The words that spelled the doom of the Uchiha."

"A cause doesn't need words to justify it," he said, his voice quiet.

It must have been something in the timbre of his voice, that cold conceit, that blind faith in his own power, that made her carefully trained composure snap. "Don't you see?" She spun to face him. "We are not gods! These cursed eyes of ours... Though we see destiny, we cannot change it! You tried and failed! In the end, Sasuke was still a tool. With the Uchiha, he would have become a weapon to protect Konoha. But with Orochimaru, he became a weapon to destroy it! Thousands of lives, lost!" Hinata felt her hands trembling—whether it was fury or anguish, she could not be sure. "Can you bear their weight, Itachi? I cannot!"

Itachi's eyes narrowed in surprise. "You did noth—"

"I knew you killed Shisui. I knew that the night you dealt the Uchiha clan its deathblow, something was happening in the Uchiha compound. I could feel the death in the air. But I did nothing. I ate my dinner and went to bed like I knew nothing. And the next morning… The next morning—"

Itachi's calloused fingers were warm on the back of her neck. Hinata molded her face into a placid mask again, kept herself from leaning back into that warm, familiar hand that she had yearned for for decades. She could not yield to it, this love that had stayed her hand that fateful night. Hinata stepped back. He let her go.

When she finally spoke again, her voice was as soft and cold as the snow that fell around them. "We must both die here today. There is no place for the two of us, now that Sasuke is dead."

Itachi's jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly. Stubborn as ever. "You were only nine years old."

Hinata's eyes softened into what could have been a smile. "We both know that I haven't been a child since I was three."

Itachi closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky. Hinata felt as if in this one movement, he was shedding the weight of the world from his shoulders. For half a moment, he seemed at peace. When he opened his eyes again, he said to the sky, "Even though I was only thirteen, and you were only nine..." His voice was as soft and smooth as the voice of the Itachi of her memory, and she could not help but savor the sound of it. It was, after all, the sound of the boy who, if it had been as Fate had first dictated, would have been the father of her children—two boys, one girl. "If I had asked…would you have gone with me?"

"Yes," she replied, honestly, without hesitation.

Itachi smiled then, warm and real.

Hinata could only look away. It was not the sort of happiness people like them, who bore the weight of thousands of souls, deserved. And so she said, "Farewell, man who would have been my husband. You, Sasuke, and I…we will all three of us meet again in Hell." She shifted her weight as chakra began to pool into her hands.

"Yes." His hand rested casually on his katana. "Farewell, woman I have loved."

The flash of a sword being drawn and the flicker of chakra in her hands, and it was over. There was no epic battle, no long speech about the woes of love and the cruelty of Fate.

There was only a man and a woman, embracing in death as they never had in life, beside the headstone that read only 'redemption.'

* * *

Oh, the ANGST! And yes, if you're wondering, Itachi and Hinata could somehow see bits and pieces of the future. It was a big plot point in my (now dead and never to be written because it was THAT bad) epic fanfic. I guess you could call this one-shot my epic's ghost! Or the result of wild speculation. Lots of wild speculation. Farewell! Maybe I'll come back in a few more years to torture the Naruto fandom.

Glitterninja

Hate it? Love it? Which you could burn those two angsty idiots (and the author) in a great ball of fire? Please review!


End file.
